Notes and observations on living in Kansas
We are now entering our fourth year in Kansas
and I think we've settled into a routine.
You can click the Ancient History link on the left if you
need to catch up with the journal I kept until May of 2004. Most of
the summer was documented on the cowboyjunkies fotopage so I probably won't
do a lot of rehashing. There are also links to prior month's entries so that
this page does not get so out of control and take forever to load.
May 19, 2005 10:30 am CDT
On the surface, this is an upbeat article about how fortune
smiled on Kansas farmers in 2004. But as I read it, I was struck by how little the people that feed this and
other nations earn for a living. Long days. Some of the hardest physical
labor I can imagine—I just think of how back-breaking
my simple gardens are—and all you have to show for it is $62,000.00 profit?
And look back to 2002. How in the hell did people survive on $20,000.00? No
wonder so many family farms are failing. This is sad. Ok everyone. Go to the
grocery store and buy extra food and give it to your local homeless. Support
the family farmer before the family farmer becomes unable to support you.
Speaking
of gardens. We bought new trees and planted them. The idea is for them to
become a living privacy fence between our house and the neighbors who built
by the barns. The trees are Thuja occidentalis 'Smaraged'. I prefer the
common name, Emerald Green Arborvitae. It's a lovely deep green evergreen
that will grow to 15 feet high and 4 feet wide. Perfect for it's intended
purpose which is to create a visual barrier between us and the neighbors
without looking like we're fencing anything off. Hopefully this will block
the dogs-eye view of their space and keep the dogs from trying to defend
against them. The dogs sure like to bark...
I've been throwing cypress mulch everywhere I
can. I hate pulling weeds and so does my back so I'm mulching all the areas
where stuff doesn't grow. Thirty-five 2-cubic-foot bags so far this season
and I could probably double that without breaking a sweat. Well, I would
break a sweat; my point is that there are a lot more spots that could use
mulch but I figure the garden is an ongoing project and as long as there is
still something to do out there, I have a reason to get out of bed every
day. Although I may have another reason to get up. Since DJ is going to be
gone for the summer, it's the perfect time for me to get a part-time job. I
have an interview on Friday morning so wish me luck.
Nothing new happening on the DJ front. He is
the poster child for the Surly Teenage Years. He hibernates down in
his 'cave.' Not making any more than a half-hearted attempt to do any
chores so the calendar is full of red X's where he won't be getting paid for
said chores. His grades are very, very good overall and as best I can tell,
he's quit being lazy about turning in assignments. So far that's the only
issue he's had in his classes. The few bad grades he's gotten on tests he
himself admits are due to not reviewing material before the test and the
assignments he's gotten F's on were not a matter of shoddy work or not
grasping the material, they were just not turned in on time.
Judi and I have both written him letters since
he doesn't want to sit down and have a conversation with us. I think he
reads every third word. I sincerely hope that once he's had an opportunity
to see that he's going to have boundaries and responsibilities regardless of
where he is living and who he is living with, he will want to return to the
family that loves him dearly.
Have been taking a few pictures here and there
as I've been gardening and I added them to the
Spring Gallery...check 'em out!
Yes, it's Friday the thirteenth. If I was superstitious I
would have just stayed in bed today. But I'm not so here I am, sitting at
the computer, writing the blog entry I promised you yesterday. It's been
raining since late afternoon yesterday, so now is the perfect time to park
in front of the pc and pour out my heart.
My internet friend Will, wrote an email asking me how I was.
Maybe he has a sixth sense, maybe he just noticed that I'm not blogging and
photographing and doing all that internet stuff I normally do. Granted, with
Spring here, the yard has required more of my time and I did go away for a
weeks vacation, but the fact is, I've just been too depressed to do all this
with the upheaval that's going on in our house.
DJ, the little rug-rat that we've been raising because his
mother is not capable of raising children, has decided that he doesn't like
chores and he doesn't like going to school and he doesn't like the rules
that make it so that we can all live in peace and harmony in our home. And
that's just normal teenaged shit, I can deal with that. What I can't deal
with is his complete and utter disrespect of us and all of the above when we
are the people who have spent the last ten years of our lives sacrificing so
that DJ has a good home, a good life, and will go on to be a successful
human being. The only mitigating factor to his behavior is that I know he
has an evil grandmother who hates us and is constantly undermining our
authority and telling him things like, "She isn't your mother, you don't
have to listen to her." And this is who DJ wants to live with. The woman who
raised three people who were so mentally damaged by her 'mothering' that
they made many wrong turns in life. Some of them came through the fire
better than others, but none of them came through without lifelong scars.
We are the ones who showed up at the trailer park when he was
three years old and his birth mother's neighbors called at 2:00 am to let
us know that DJ was wandering around outside while his mom was high on meth-amphetamine. We are the ones who have been there in the middle of the
night when he spiked a fever and needed to be cooled down or taken to the
hospital. We are the ones who watched his early rage come out in fits where
he would bang his head against the wall so hard we thought he would
seriously injure himself.
We are the ones who feed him, clothe him, and help him with
his homework or get him tutoring when we can't help. We are the ones who
attend the school concerts, sports meets and parent-teacher conferences. We
are the ones who have comforted him as his biological father has drifted in
and out of his life with his bizarre behavior. We are the ones who have
taken him on family vacations, gotten him counseling, and been the ones to
answer his terrified call when the power goes out. Judi is the one that
turned down promotions for years because they would require more travel or a
move to another state and she wanted a stable, consistent home life for
these kids (Kids? Yes, we used to have DJ's older brother too, but he's an
adult now and doing very well in spite of our alleged bad parenting).
I am the one who walked away from a 30K a year job because DJ needed a
parent more than we needed my paycheck.
We are the ones who have hosted sleep-overs, chauffeured
fishing parties and school dances. We are the ones who have ripped out
flower beds for a basketball court and sent him off for summer vacations to
spend time with relatives and friends back on the west coast. We are the
ones who have provided him with his own bedroom and bathroom and a great
room filled with video games, air hockey and computers. The only thing he
doesn't have down in his basement 'apartment' is a kitchen. Please tell me
how many children have such wonderful things in their lives. Most
importantly, we are the ones who love him. Whether he's been good or been
bad, we are the ones who have always loved him.
But because we are only legal guardians, he's always thought
he had the ability to play all the various family members off one another to
get what he wants. And we could ignore it when he was a child, but he's a
young man now, and his attempts at manipulation must end. So this time when
he got pissed off at us and he said, "I'll just go live with Mimi" , we
called the bluff. Threw some luggage his way and told him to pack and go. We
are tired of fighting for what's best for DJ. We have spent ten years
fighting for what's best for DJ and when the battle was an occasional
skirmish against a woman who is 1500 miles away, it was not that difficult.
But now the battle for what's right for DJ is on our doorstep, inside our
very own walls, and we are tired.
We are tired of his biological mother, who is clean and
sober over five years now, yet has done nothing to reclaim the four children
she 'lost' to her drug abuse. She has a nice job that she loves. It involves
travel and she's told us flat out she doesn't want to quit her job and
settle in one place so that she might have the opportunity to raise her
children herself. And why should she? Somebody else has been raising her
children for more years than she ever had 'possession' of them.
We are tired of his biological father, who never attempted to
see the son he knew existed until DJ's paternal grandfather tracked DJ down
because he wanted to know his grandson. We are tired of the biological
father who has cut off all contact with DJ not once, but twice on
some convoluted twist of his drug-addled brain. His most recent
appearance in DJ's life is because the government is going after him for 13
years of back child support. And his most recent rejection of his son came
when DJ called him the liar he is for trying to blackmail DJ's grandfather
by saying that if Grandpa did not give the biological father money, he would
tell the police that Grandpa sexually abused him as a child. It's not the
first time he has made this threat. We are the ones who had to investigate
these allegations because DJ spends time with Grandpa and what sort of
parents would we be if we did not investigate such a possible threat to our
child?
We are tired of his maternal grandfather standing mute while
his wife does everything she possibly can to undermine the hard work we've
done in trying to overcome the bad start DJ got in life from having lousy
birth parents. We are the only parents he's ever known. We know that the teenage
years are a tough time for kids and parents. All I have to do is think of my
teenage years. I put my parents through hell. But in all fairness, they put
me through hell too and while that doesn't excuse my atrocious teenage
behavior, none of the factors that spurred my actions are present in DJ's
life. We are not substance abusers, we do not neglect even one aspect of his
life, we do not physically or mentally abuse him.
We are so tired, that we have given up on the idea of
adopting him. Why go to all that time, effort, expense and scrutiny when all
it takes is one stubborn child to stand up and say, "I don't want to be
adopted," while his psychotic grandmother cheers him on? Every person DJ has
asked about this change in living arrangements, every single person save the maternal grandparents have said he is best off where he is, but the
only person he wants to listen to is his Mimi. Why? Because if he lives with
Mimi he thinks he won't have to do chores, and there will be no rules and no
one will nag him about getting good grades in school. Well I don't think
that's going to be the case. I think he will discover that there are always
rules and expectations no matter where you go in life. I just think he's
going to be learning this lesson the hard way, and much later in life than
need be. But you know what? I'm tired.
There is still time to undo this tragedy. DJ will spend the
entire summer with his maternal grandparents. At the end of that time we
will respect his wishes (unlike his disrespect of ours) and if at that time
he wishes to make the living arrangement a permanent one, we will go to
court and relinquish the guardianship we've held for most of his life. We
will no longer be obligated to be his parents. We will no longer be required
to care, which will be very, very hard to do.
May 2, 2005 9:30 pm CDT
Well it certainly looks like Spring is in full swing, but you
wouldn't know it from the temperatures we are having. It's still getting
down in the low 30's at night and the days are having trouble breaking into
the 50's. Not sure what impact this has on how well the plants that have yet
to bloom will bloom, but the cooler temperatures have meant less need to
water everything.
I went to my mom's place in Prescott Valley, AZ for a weeks
vacation and it really was a great vacation. I love my family here in
Kansas, but they are my job so it's not much of a vacation for me
when we go on a family vacation. This was just me all by my little, lonesome
self. There were no exceptional plane delays and no lost luggage. Mom &
Roger treated me to a very good time. Mom only tried to kill me twice and
neither time was intentional.
They have a beautiful new house. It's open, it's airy, it's
spotlessly clean. They have three huge cats and while it wasn't the same as
the cat and dog lovin' I'm used to getting at home, I did have a 'pet fix'
when I needed one. They have a great pool and spa. It was far too cold for
the pool, but with the exception of one stormy night, I was in the spa each night
for a nice relaxing soak. Note to self: must get a hot tub...
Of
course we went to Sedona one day. We spent a good chunk of time at a
roadside spot that sells arts, crafts, and every imaginable piece of yard
art you could possibly dream up, all in one place. I got goodies for my Dad
there since they had some unusual spices—read: hotter
than Hades—that I thought he might like. Mom got me a cute little door stop
shaped like a kitty cat (I've been using a rock) and a cute little ceramic
tile with a lizard design on it. Once we made it into town proper, we did
what any woman does—we went shopping. We got T-shirts and other fun things.
We took pictures of stuffed dead animals, red chili peppers hanging to dry,
gosh-awful yard art and beautiful wood carvings. Once we were all shopped
out, we headed up the canyon to look at the red rocks and visit
Slide Rock State Park. Oak Creek Canyon had experienced torrential rains along
with much of the southwest these past few months so we were unable to go to
the park.
I
imagine they have some damage to repair from the extra high creek levels.
This did not stop us from continuing further up stream and pulling off to
check out some lovely areas. I was amazed at how high the waters had been as
evidenced by the log jams and bits of formerly floating debris lodged high
in the saplings and trees. I know that some of the residents of the canyon must have had water running through their living rooms judging from
their location right on the creek. I heard that at one point if you left
your home, they would not let you back in. Still, it must be quite a
beautiful place to live if you can accept the fact that you could one day
lose it all to mother nature's whims.
Another
day found us at Prescott, in the old downtown area that reminded me so much of
our
main street in Manhattan, Kansas. Lots of expensive little boutiques right
next to the western wear store that's been there for 75 years. Java joints,
restaurants and old time saloons compete for the tourist dollar and neither
of us escaped without leaving behind some cash. There was a beautiful
courthouse with iron statues and a very cool time-line of the history of
Arizona. This is where I did some of my trinket shopping for Judi and
Bonnie. There was a store there called The Cat's Meow that I'm sure Bonnie
and I could spend hours in. It was just jammed to the rafters with cool
stuff, most of which had a cat motif. As it was mom & I tarried quite long
there.
We
did take a day or two to vegetate and just lay around doing nothing, but
there is so much to see and do nearby. We went to an old copper mining town
high in the mountains.
Jerome, Arizona
is a mile high city, you can tell that from the twisty-turny road that leads
to it from the valley floor. The only worse thing I can imagine than driving
up this road is being a passenger in a car driving up this road. I was
terrified. I can't believe how terrified in light of the way I used
to speed my Camaro through the canyons to the beach when I lived in
California. I guess it's simply a matter of being closer
to
the grave than the cradle. I was much relieved to be told that there was a
softer, gentler—albeit longer—way to get home. It was beautiful up there and
the buildings were quite interesting, but it doesn't take much imagination
to see how gravity wants to pull everything down hill. The town is filled
with artist's galleries and studios. Gift shops that stock everything from
local wares to made-in-Taiwan. Taverns and Bed & Breakfast houses adorn each
and every picturesque street and there is history everywhere. If you come,
bring your walking shoes and plenty of memory and batteries for your camera.
Walking is the only way to truly see it and you'll want to take pictures of
everything.
